The Refounding of the Order

When I look back over the last eight years I see the story of the unfolding of the Order as a story first and foremost about people. About how they have come together and worked together and about how they have been inspired to do wonderful things - either with others or on their own. So I make no apology here for mentioning lots of names, and of course I can't mention today all the names of all the people who have played a part in creating the Order as it is today, but I shall try to mention as many as possible. The story starts with a name - Nuinn. He really initiated the new cycle of the Order on the Inner Plane back in 1984. Three years later in 1987 just after the experience I recount in the letter that accompanies the first pack of the Druid Grade (the letter with the cartoon of the two monks with one saying to the other "Is this it then?") I met Stephanie again. I had known her when I had been in the Order as a teenager and she had sewn my robe for me for my initiation on Glastonbury Tor. She and I began to live together at Imbolc in 1988, and almost immediately after we moved into a flat in Primrose Hill I was invited to refound the Order. Without her support, encouragement and insights - and then editorial help as the Gwersu developed - the Order would never have come into being again. When I try to detach myself, and look objectively at the question why it is that we were chosen to do this work, the answer seems clear. To really get the Order doing the work it needed to do, it had to have practical people with specific experience in certain areas of work. And it's intriguing to know that of the many people involved in helping the Order to grow, in those very early days were people who were connected with the old Order and with Nuinn - Steph, me, Caitlin, Olivia Robertson, Marian Green all knew him, and to be sure that it would get off the ground in a practical way they chose good old Capricornians. (Six of the key people are Capricorns born in 1952, strangely enough). By 1988 I had earned enough money to launch the Order and not need a full-time job. and had experience in publishing, running a company, running a group called the Esoteric Society, and had training in psychotherapy and play therapy.

Looking back I can also see that my rather painful experience of followinga guru for some years taught me invaluable lessons in how not to run an esoteric group or Order. Combined with these experiences came Stephanie's immense practical skills - she created the first robes a portable grove and the artwork for the Gwers cover, for example. So after Stephanie and I began work on the refounding, out of the blue I heard from Olivia Robertson, founder of the Fellowship of Isis, who had been a friend of Nuinn's and with whom I had lived at Clonegal castle learning meditation fifteen years previously. She invited me to meet some friends at the Tara Hotel in London, and it was there that I met Caitlin Matthews for the first time. She and Olivia both provided more ideas, encouragement and support all of which have continued over the years. Marian Green, whom I had known years before, provided more support by helping to present the Order through her magazine Quest. But this is a story of Places as well as People. You know about the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden which was the site of the founding of our ancestral or founding body The Ancient Druid Order in 1717. Well it was at another pub in Covent Garden that a chance meeting between two old friends of the Order, Douglas Lyne and Brian Peacock, provided the catalyst for the saving of much of the Order records. And it was coincidentally there that I had an office between 1984 and 1988, and it was also in Covent Garden that I found the first of Nuinn's books in the trail of discoveries that I recount in the Book of Druidry. Another significant place was Kew Gardens which held the Order's office for a while, and its address for a good deal longer. Just across the road from the office was Kew Palace, home of the Princess of Wales, Veleda Archdruidess of Kew, as Stukeley called her. It was in Primrose Hill and Kew that we held the first embryonic Groves of the Order in 1988 and 1989. As well as Primrose Hill, Covent Garden and Kew Gardens, two more places of significance emerged - Glastonbury where we held our first Summer Solstice celebration in 1988 in Chalice Well Garden all through the night, and the isle of Iona, where we held our first Retreat in 1989.